High Voltage Hacks: All About Electroluminescence

Although many might not know it, electroluminescent materials use high voltage, and thus qualify for our featured topic. Many may assume that these sheets work in the same way as LED lights, using low-voltage DC power. This, however, is not the case, as they need around 100 volts of AC current to allow them to light up.

For a battery-powered solution, this means converting the battery’s DC power to AC. Adafruit has a good tutorial about working with EL wire and powering it up using a portable inverter. One should obviously be careful to properly insulate any clothing using this material as being shocked is generally not fun.

The video after the break is pretty long, but is well produced and will give you a good background of EL use. If you don’t have 30 minutes to dedicate to this, be sure to at least skip to 2:43 to see one of the coolest EL shirts we’ve seen.

For another related hack, check out this one by [Jeri Ellsworth] about making EL ink.

I’ve done a few EL-wire projects and… it’s weak. LITERALLY. Anyway it’s so two years ago! Writeups leave out two things:
1) working with fragile, high frequency high voltage it is a pain, and
2) that stuff is dim no matter what you do.
LED’s ftw.

It’s a bit too commercial to me, 3/4 of the video showing off ready-made products. The first 1/4 is veryh informative though. I had an EL equalizer shirt with the inverter in a similar plastic enclosure until my girlfriend decided it needed to be washed… hot! Now it only looks like a firefly was squished onto it.